So sad. But I always remember Tagore’s poem Krishnakali and think in some families it must be different:

In the village they call her the dark girl but to me she is the flower Krishnakali On a cloudy day in a field I saw the dark girl’s dark gazelle-eyes. She had no covering on her head, her loose hair had fallen on her back.

Dark? However dark she be,
I have seen her dark gazelleeyes.

Two black cows were lowing, as it grew dark under the heavy clouds. So with anxious, hurried steps, the dark girl came from her hut. Raising her eyebrows toward the sky, she listened a moment to the clouds’ rumble.

Dark? However dark she be,
I have seen her dark gazelle-eyes.

A gust of the east wind rippled the rice plants. I was standing by a ridge, alone in the field. Whether or not she looked at me Is known only to us two.

Dark? However dark she be,
I have seen her dark gazelle-eyes.

This how the Kohldark cloud rises in the northeast in Jaistha; the soft dark shadow descends on the Tamal grove in Asharh; and sudden delight floods the heart in the night of Sravan.

Dark? However dark she be,
I have seen her dark gazelle-eyes.

To me she is the flower Krishnakali, whatever she may be called by others. In a field in Maynapara village I saw the dark girl’s dark gazelle-eyes. She did not cover her head, not having the time to feel embarrassed.

Dark? However dark she be,
I have seen her dark gazelle-eyes.

-- Rabindranath Tagore

While India has predominance of light-skin people in Bollywood, US has predominance of blonde, blue-eyed people in Hollywood or on television, and neither is good. It is also well known how extensively media in US covers the missing reports of blonde-blue eye people compared to completely ignoring similar plights of people with different looks.

Great pity that he wasn’t lightly skinned instead.

Quit your strawman-building. My comment wasn’t aimed at you, so I don’t know why you’re taking needless offense. And anyway, if you “want your sister to marry” a certain type of person, you come across as a big-brother-knows-best paternalist. (Couldn’t you have just as easily said “I want to marry an educated person” instead? Why project it onto someone else?)

If my earlier point wasn’t clear, I was saying that we all have prejudices: some of them for evolutionary reasons, some from social pressure, and some from personal idiosyncrasies or fetishes. We can choose (or not) to overcome each prejudice that we identify, with whatever priority we wish to assign, and some of them will take more effort than others. That’s what personal growth is all about — it’s about being less-than-ideal and striving to become better. Your question really was about what priority we should assign to one of these prejudices (skin color) vs others (education and wealth and stuff), and I have no particular preference — do what you’re comfortable with for yourself. You weren’t denying that they’re prejudices of some sort and I wasn’t saying that you were defending one of them by propping it up with others.

What I do object to is the attitude exemplified by raj in comments 64, 133, 142 and 163, that since we will never be fully free of prejudice, therefore we shouldn’t even make the effort to confront one of them, and continue to wallow in the fetid pool of the biases that were handed down to us. Comment 163, had it been said 100 years back, could have been used to justify any of a host of prejudices, including some that we’ve collectively rejected today. If raj has a preference for pale skin, that’s his personal prerogative and it reflects on his attitudes than on anyone else, but he’s flat out wrong in projecting it as static, immutable, and above all “natural”, which is what his earlier comments have stated, and which is bull. If raj is incapable of getting over a skin color fixation, it’s nobody’s problem but his own.

heh

Fair enough. But I still think there is a degree of difference in the practical effect of dark skin vs. short height. A short man may have some negative experiences associated with his height, but it doesn’t get the same amount of attention as a woman with dark skin, IMO. Partly, this is because the short man can’t really do anything to change his condition. But the dark-skinned woman is expected to alter her natural complexion in order to be successful.

Or maybe I’ll just shut up now.